Here is the situation: An author has a Flare project with a target named "Jackpot" and plans to publish the output to the company website (xyzincorporated.com), using the HTML5 server-based format. In addition, the author has 20 Microsoft Word documents and 15 PDF files that she wants to be included in user searches. Finally, she has four other Flare projects and wants to merge them with the output from the Jackpot target, which will serve as the "parent" target. The author wants to publish the output to this directory on the server: http://www.xyzincorporated.com/help systems. But before she publishes the final output, she wants to test the output on her local computer. The following steps in this scenario require the completion of some tasks by the author and the completion of other tasks by the web administrator, who is responsible for the production server where the final output files will be placed.

Author On her local computer, the author completes the steps for installing Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) and ASP.NET.

Author In Flare, the author follows the steps for setting up the Jackpot target, which is based on the HTML5 server-based output type. This includes entering "Web" as the catalog name on the Publishing tab (we're assuming the intention is to use the default value, as opposed to a custom catalog).

Author The author generates the Jackpot target in Flare. The author then creates a folder called "MCPreview" on her computer at C:\Inetpub\wwwroot (e.g., C:\Inetpub\wwwroot) and places a copy of the Jackpot output files in that folder.

Author In order to enable the advanced HTML5 server-based search features on her computer, the author opens the output folder and double-clicks the file ConfigureSearch.exe, which is located in the output's Service\Console.ConfigureSearch subfolder. In the case of this author, she finds her executable file here:

Author The author generates her four "child" Flare targets (those that will be merged with the parent Jackpot target). In Flare, she selects Project > Open Output Folder and copies each output folder related to a child target. She then pastes these output folders in the following location:

The author is careful not to view the output of any of the child targets from Flare immediately after she builds them. If she were to do this, the output files for the parent Jackpot project would be overwritten in the MCPreview folder.

Author Now the author wants to add the Word and PDF files to the output, so that they can be included in searches. However, an initial step needs to be completed first. Certain files (Microsoft Office, text, and HTML) do not need any attention because they can be included in the search just the way they are. PDF documents, however, require an IFilter. Therefore, the author downloads an IFilter from Adobe and installs it on her computer.

Author The author views the HTML5 server-based output on her computer to test the merged output and the search for Word and PDF content. However, this time she does not initiate the view from within Flare. This time, she opens a browser window and types the following path into the address bar:

http://localhost/MCPreview/Default.htm

She does this because if she had initiated the view from within Flare, the output files in the MCPreview folder would have been replaced with new files, which would have overwritten the merged child output, Word documents, and PDF files that were added manually.

Author Let's say the author is now finished testing her output and is ready to publish the final output to the server. Therefore, in Flare she creates a publishing destination for the parent Jackpot target that points to http://www.xyzincorporated.com/help systems/Jackpot. She generates the output for the parent Jackpot target again and publishes the Jackpot HTML5 server-based output to that location.

Author/Web Administrator The author generates the four child Flare target outputs again. In Flare, she selects Project > Open Output Folder and copies each output folder related to a child target. The author can provide these folders to the web administrator or (if the author has access) directly paste them in the following location:

http://www.xyzincorporated.com/help systems/Jackpot/AutoMerge

For example, if the author has child targets named "Child1," "Child2," "Child3," and "Child4," those output folders would be added to the website as follows:

http://www.xyzincorporated.com/help systems/Jackpot/AutoMerge/Child1

http://www.xyzincorporated.com/help systems/Jackpot/AutoMerge/Child2

http://www.xyzincorporated.com/help systems/Jackpot/AutoMerge/Child3

http://www.xyzincorporated.com/help systems/Jackpot/AutoMerge/Child4

Alternatively, the author (or web administrator) could manually create subfolders on the website that are named after each target folder; these subfolders would be contained within the AutoMerge folder. The author can then create publishing destinations that point to the appropriate subfolders and automatically publish each child target accordingly.

Note: If you are testing HTML5 server-based output on your local machine, you may need to wait a few minutes after viewing the output for the Indexing Service to fully scan your files. Otherwise, you may not immediately see the effects of the scan (e.g., searches of non-XHTML files, incorporation of merged output files) in the output. If you avoid performing other tasks during this period, the scanning of the files will be completed more quickly.

Note: Flare's HTML5 Top Navigation skin does not support project merging.